Racial theo-politics outperformed individualized labor modalities at delivering cheap labor and power

Evidence

At the outset, the labor regime for mineral capitalism urged homo minimalis: strength over skill, youth over experience, physicality over intellectuality. In any case, an individualized relation to the deity might just as well spawn a sense of self-worth and equal standing, and so a disposition to reject, resist, or rebel against exploitative labor conditions as it did discipline, following orders, and deference. The political theology of race, drawing into common orbit British expansionist and boer settler in mineral-rich South Africa, was far more conducive to delivering labor, securing power, and controlling land – in short, producing the wealth of power through governing heterogeneity – than any simply individualized modality, whether of the missionaries or finance capitalists. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1447 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In one respect, the most important one, the Boers remained the undisputed masters of the country: whenever rational labor and production policies came into conflict with race considerations, the latter won. Profit motives were sacrificed time and again to the demands of a race society, frequently at a terrific price. The rentability of the railroads was destroyed overnight when the government dismissed 17,000 Bantu employees and paid whites wages that amounted to 200 per cent more; expenses for municipal government became prohibitive when native municipal employees were replaced with whites; the Color Bar Bill finally excluded all black workers from mechanical jobs and forced industrial enterprise to a tremendous increase of production costs. The race world of the Boers had nobody to fear any more, least of all white labor, whose trade unions complained bitterly that the Color Bar Bill did not go far enough. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 526 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Wherever one looked—among those who saw the movement in political-electoral terms, or those who advocated revolutionary violence, or those who were committed to economic trade unionism—the labor movement was most often at best ambivalent toward Black liberation and progress. The ideology of racism in combination with self-interest functioned to pit immigrant and poor white workers against the Black worker and the slave. And after the Civil War, the same social consciousness divided the working classes—immigrant and white—from the ex-slave. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 949 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Group-based racial rule outcompetes individualizing ideology for cheap labor supply — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1447; Racial political theology governed heterogeneous labor more effectively than individualizing religion — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1447; Racial ideology functions as a labor discipline for capital (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Racial political theology governed heterogeneous labor more effectively than individualizing religion #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1447
• Race ideology trumped economic rationality even at ruinous cost #complicates (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 526
• Racism and self-interest aligned white labor against Black workers across all labor factions #complicates (0.73) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 949
• Qualitative individualism’s division of labor produces a powerful anti-liberal state #complicates (0.72)
• Aggregated individual worker preferences can produce systemic institutional racism. #complicates (0.72) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 815